Coping Mechanisms
by BukkakeNoJutsu
Summary: The difference between breaking down and having been broken beyond all repair is all in how you tilt your head and look at it. It's time to take a good long look at the truth that lies at the heart of Uzumaki Naruto. Mature themes. Naruto/Naruko, maybe?


Coping Mechanisms

By: BukkakeNoJutsu

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Disclaimer: What are the odds Kishimoto would ever write anything like this? Hahaha, thought so. Move along people. Move along.

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"Innocence, it don't come easy.  
In a sense, it never will.  
Accidents mean no one's guilty.  
Ignorance means someone's killed."

-Counting Down the Hours, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists

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My name is Uzumaki Naruto, and I'm a sex addict...

...or chronic masturbator, depending on which way you tilt your head and squint your eyes.

Right now, I'm on my back with my head turned to the side. I randomly chose my right because if I looked down, the game would be lost right away.

Honestly, there's no "winning" the game. There's only how long can you hold out before it ends. Ultimately, I always, always fucking lose in the end (or win, depending on how you look at it once again).

My eyes are screwed shut like jar lids, but eventually my resolve loosens and I glance down.

We meet eye to eye, mine to hers, pools of clear blue to pools of clear blue, as her head bobs up and down in my bare lap. Her full lips are wrapped around me like a drowning person wrapping his or her arms around a life preserver. Sometimes she bobs up and down slowly like the tide lapping against the shore, but sometimes with a frighteningly quick interplay of hands and mouth rarely seen outside of those who have mastered playing woodwind instruments.

Regardless of tempo changes, her eyes never leave mine, expressing mischievousness and raw desire. A moan escapes from my mouth seeming to reverberate in the air. She moans against me, one of her hands slipping away from my lap to between her legs to capitalize on her growing lust.

When I look her in the eyes, I can see exactly how much she's enjoying this.

It frightens me to see certain things mirrored in her, beyond the blonde hair, blue eyes, and whisker marks on her cheeks. I see the same craving for affection, and the desperate need to love and feel loved in return.

When I look into her eyes, I can see that she wants me just as much as much as I want her.

I close mine because, although I know I am going to have to forfeit this round soon, I futilely attempt to delay the inevitable another moment or so.

I feel so goddamned lost.

It wasn't always like this.

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Come to think of it, regardless of how aware I was of it at the time or not, I have almost always been surrounded by sex. Living in the poorer section of Konoha, more than bordering the red-light district, and being left largely to my own devices made for a fairly patchy understanding of human relationships in general, and by patchy I mean fucked up.

More than once had the darkened alleyway next to my apartment been used for a quickie by a scandalously clad young woman plying the oldest trade in the world.

The first time it had happened, I, curious at the sound, shined a flashlight down at the the scene when a drunken customer, ultimately flinging a glass bottle at the source of his distraction, convinced me to shut it off.

From that, I learned to watch the mysterious shadowed actions in secret, not comprehending the sweating, grunting, and the grinding of it all.

There seemed to be a pattern though. The men would leave senseless and stumbling, in more of a daze than before. Mindless, really.

As I snuck around the brightly colored district in a way only a true street urchin could, a theory formed in my head.

Apparently, the more naked a pretty lady got the more senseless a guy would become, some even passing out at the sight.

One day at lunch at Ichiraku's ramen, I asked for clarification on my theory.

"Ayame-neechan, can I ask you a question?" I started with a mouth half-full of noodles and broth.

"Sure Naruto! Anything for our number one loyal customer," beamed the older brunette girl, having no problem understanding me.

"Um, alright. Why do old guys always get so stupid about seeing pretty ladies naked?"

Ayame looked a little out of her element for a few moments, apparent even to my slightly more clueless younger self.

"I...ah...I mean... ...because they're perverts," she finally decided distastefully, "Yeah."

"Perverts, huh? Are they bad?"

"Of course. Ah...perverts are so bad that they don't deserve to eat here at Ichiraku's."

"Really?!"

Frankly, I was terrified at the prospect.

Her 12-year-old self seemed to sigh in what I can now recognize now as relief.

"Uh...yeah. Just make sure you don't grow up to be one. Right, Naruto-chan?"

I nodded fervently.

"When I'm older, I'll be too busy being an awesome hokage and all, so I won't even have time to even think about being a pervert. I'll wear my big hat all the time and I'll even have a giant swimming pool filled with ramen instead of water."

"That's good," she smiled, slipping a few extra toppings into my bowl when her old man wasn't looking, as a reward and a distraction.

So that's what the score was, I thought. Pervs were bad old guys whose weakness was naked ladies. That was the key to everything. Simple enough, right?

God, if I only knew.

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Even after my epiphany about perversion at the age of 7, I had no way to act upon it, besides continuing to watch and listen as I had been. (Apparently, Ayame's quick spiel about perverts understandably did not include anything about the subtleties of voyeurism.)

This all changed when we started to learn henge, or the art of transformation, at the academy.

Fuck. After training with Ero-sennin and re-drilling all the fundamentals all over again, I can really appreciate now all the petty lengths some assholes went to sabotage my career as a shinobi.

Ha!

The real textbook definition of an academy-approved henge is a simple, basic technique that serves as a basis for all genjutsu. It's a small, very localized application of chakra that projects a mental image externally on the user's body. The basic technique doesn't hold up against any kind of close scrutiny or even physical contact, but works well enough on a cursory glance and is important for developing the proper mindset for more increasingly advanced forms of genjutsu.

At least that's what Ero-Sennin had said during our training trip, but it was all new news to me.

I had thought I was performing henge perfectly, but what I was doing each and every time was the equivalent of bothering to handcraft a masterpiece of a chakra blade, using it to spread butter on my toast, and then tossing it away when I was done.

The way I was taught my "henge" by a negligent instructor was to simply imagine the form I wanted to become and simply transform like magic, gleefully ignoring any subtleties of the real technique.

To everyone's surprise including my own, I was the first in my class to supposedly "master" the technique. Although the asshole teacher did nothing to acknowledge my accomplishment, some of the other students asked me for pointers, and, when I explained how I did it, they thought I was being a jerk and by not explaining it to them.

I didn't even know at the time that a real henge was supposed to have limits.

You aren't really supposed to be able to mask your body as something much bigger or smaller than yourself, unless you utilize increasingly more difficult henge variations, or actual advanced genjutsu.

A basic henge is not supposed to have "substance." It's only supposed to work on a target's sense of sight, not smell, touch, or taste.

I was able to transform flawlessly, and I thought that was the way it was supposed to be because it was easy for me. Too easy.

Years later, Ero-sennin once explained to me how kitsune are supposed to be natural shapeshifters and tricksters. Now, the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox is about as far removed from a regular kitsune as Gamabunta is from a tadpole, but apparently a little bit of demon fox goes a long way in my case.

At Team 7's first fight with Zazuba at Wave, my faith in my henge skills made Sasuke nearly balk at my plan to free Kakashi-sensei from Zazuba's Water Prison Technique.

"I'll henge into another Fuma Shuriken and you can throw us both as Zazuba as a distraction," I explained confidently.

"Really?" questioned Sasuke, somewhat uneasily.

"Trust me."

Afterwards, I still didn't understand why both Sasuke and Kakashi-sensei had thought the plan was so suicidal. If I were to henge into a strong steel shuriken, it would at least offer some degree of protection against Zazuba's oversized blade. If he could cleave through my steel, Team 7 was fucked either way. A win-win situation.

Anyways, my new-found transformation skill ended up making me even more of a pranking terror, and really confused the hell out of older nin, including any AnBu members trying to pursue me.

It was nice to be good at something for a change. Unfortunately, my other shinobi skills like shushin, kawarimi, and bunshin didn't start coming along until well after Iruka-sensei started at the academy and made a real effort to instruct me.

With my inadvertently superior transformation ability, I stumbled upon what would eventually become the fuse for the blonde bombshell known as the "Sexy no Jutsu."

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To set the record straight, my conception and usage of the original "Sexy no jutsu" had always been nothing but innocent. It was designed to be the ultimate prank against perverts.

It just happened that, over time, my original prank deepened, advanced, and snowballed wildly, madly, and intensely out of my out of my hands and onto my lap.

Feel free to start making jokes about me making my own bed and now having to sleep in it.

Jerks.

I came up with the form for my Sexy no Jutsu out of what I thought was attractive: A lively, open, and exciting lady based on some sort of intangible ideals of mine.

Reflecting on it now, the look of my Sexy no Jutsu was probably influenced by my not-so-buried desire to have a mother, an older sister, an aunt, or just simply anyone who was part of my family still around. A not so small amount of pride was probably involved in thinking that she would be more beautiful, wild, and more fun than anyone around.

For a long while the technique worked as well as I hoped it would. I could even knock out Hokage-ojisan with it.

It was perfect, far more so than I was aware of.

At the time, the fact that my Sexy no Jutsu was anatomically correct in every living, breathing sense didn't really matter to me.

It was a tool for pranking like a water balloon, or a can of paint, or a stink bomb.

So what was the big deal that I could turn into a hot girl? I didn't care. I was more concerned with getting Sakura-chan to notice me.

It didn't dawn upon me to have some crazy perverted night of self-discovery worthy of a cheesy-ass volume of Ero-Sennin's Icha Icha Series. I was barely breaking double digit ages, and I still couldn't make heads or tails of the crazy little glimpses of sex I still stumbled across occasionally at night.

Why was she on her knees now? What's that slurping sound? I didn't get it at all.

It's not like I was Kiba who got busted at school, in the middle of pantomiming the manner of two dogs he had seen going at it at his house, by a fuming Iruka-sensei.

There was no one at home for me who could really explain in the intricacies of it. We very briefly got some excessively dry technical details about sex at the academy and I learned where babies came from, but my education was still as patchworked as ever. At school, they made it sound as exciting as a putting together model ships.

My education would continue to stagnate until I stumbled across the Kage Bunshin technique.

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If most people guessed at the kinds of things I did with my Kage Bunshin those first few days after I learned the technique, almost all of them would be completely fucking wrong.

I have a reputation among village for being a prankster and for some, shall we say, "unsavory" jutsus. The reputation I established when I was younger is pretty well deserved considering the amount spectacular shit I pulled off back then.

Even some of the people that I'm closest to now would guess that after I ran home after pummeling Mizuki I probably molested a female clone or twenty as an explanation for how I came up with my infamous Harem no Jutsu.

The truth is actually pretty mundane.

After I slept off the fight with Mizuki and met with Team 7 for the first time, I spent the entire afternoon after playing with my shadow clones. We played tag, kickball, built this gigantic kickass sandcastle, and even took turns pushing each other on the swing set.

I know, I know that sounds incredibly lame. Passing the genin exam and receiving a hitai-ite is supposed to signify that you're now a proper adult in the eyes of the village.

I was supposed to grow up and leave that childish shit behind.

Fuck that.

I'd understand and probably agree if I ever had a chance to be one in the first place.

In those first few days, the Kage Bunshin technique was a dream come true. I had always wanted playmates, friends, companions, whatever, and being able to conjure them out of thin air was something I can't even describe.

God, if I dwell on it now I might get a little weepy.

Sure they weren't "real," but they were better than nothing. Growing up by myself, my imagination was often the only thing I had to keep myself occupied. I learned to become very proficient at pretending---pretending that things didn't hurt me, pretending that I was better off on my own, and pretending that I wasn't lonely.

People who tend to mock the importance I place on friendship now often have never had the misfortune of growing up alone and unwanted.

Gaara understands, possibly even more so than myself.

Haku understood.

This is what I'll have to beat into Sasuke even if it kills him.

Having the opportunity to have a childhood is something I guess I'll always consider kinda sacred. It's why I always had set aside some time to play with Konohamaru, Moegi, and Udon. When I become Hokage, I'll always have time for the children of Konoha.

Hell, old man Sandaime had time for me.

One of my favorite memories from a past short on good times is of Old Man Hokage teaching me how to make shuriken out of folded paper when I was still too young for the academy. You could even throw them, too. Gramps even added chakra to one of his throws and had embedded his paper shuriken in a training post.

It was one of the coolest things I had ever seen, and it made be want to be just like him.

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After spending a few days reenacting a childhood that never was and training with my clones, I had an idea to improve my pranks by combining a kage bunshin with the sexy no jutsu.

Turns out, it's a hell of a lot different on the receiving end.

Performing the sexy no jutsu is just like putting on a fancy suit, except that the suit is a new body. I had never closely examined the "suit" I was wearing as I performed the technique, as I just usually tossed it on and off for laughs.

For one, she was significantly taller than me, my eyes reaching only chest level, but apparently that was fine with me.

I wiped my mouth when I found out I was drooling. When did I start to do that? It seemed as if my heart was pounding in my ears.

Why was I getting so nervous?

"Boss, you're blushing," stated the relatively tall girl pointing to my cheeks, amused.

"I am? It makes sense though. I-I think we hit the jackpot when we pinned down your look," I replied, walking a slow circle to fully appreciate her in all her three dimensions.

"How's the ass? The bathroom mirror was always too tiny to double check," she mentioned.

"I-It's good, great even. Do you mind if I-"

"Go ahead, grab away. I'm you, right? We don't have to be shy about anything. We're extensions of each other or something like what that like the scroll said," she interrupted. "My ass is your ass."

She patted her firm backside.

Good grief, my face was burning red hot like a star formed out of pure molten embarrassment.

"I was actually going to ask if I could call you something like...uh Naruko since we're in two bodies now, but...yeah," I stated as I ventured a tentative squeeze.

It was full and shapely, soft yet taut. I had the the oddest urge like I wanted to lick it. I had another feel, less tentative this time, more lingering.

"Naruko's fine by me. You should check these out though. They're pretty awesome," Naruko exclaimed cupping and un-cupping her chest over and over again, watching her breasts bounce.

We both watched for a while, entranced.

"This is the BEST JUTSU EVER!" yelled the both of us simultaneously.

We high-fived.

Naruko clutched me to her in triumph, and we swung around the room a bit. I left her embrace in a total daze, staggering or stumbling a step or two before bothering to regain any semblance of composure. She smelled nice too. Was it a half remembered perfume from someplace? How did we ever come up with anything so...so...perfect,

"Come on. I know for damn sure that you'll want to give these a try," gesticulated Naruko towards her chest.

"Uh-huh," I nodded, not trusting my ability to form coherent sentences.

I reached out like a blind man reading braille for the first time, over alien surfaces again and again not comprehending, but wishing to understand. I traced her curves hungrily, soon feeling the nubs hardening at my fingertips. I palmed them and then started tracing my fingertips around them curiously.

I had traced the characters of my name halfway on them with my thumbs before I noticed her hitched breathing, and felt her pulse racing.

I looked up and smiled.

"You're blushing now, too."

"Ha, I don't get it. It doesn't tickle. It just feels good, real good," she judged, looking away and almost my shade of red.

"Really?"

"Yeah."

I hadn't stopped, and was starting to nuzzle her. She hugged me and leaned against a wall of our apartment for support.

"How far are we going to go this?" I asked softly, almost sadly. "It's already starting to get confusing. I-"

I didn't know if I was asking myself or her. Weren't we the same anyway? Did I really want an answer?

A moment of silence passed as we were both deep in thought, believe it or not.

Naruko spoke first.

"I'm okay doing whatever feels good, for both you and me."

She raised my hands to her chest.

"This feels good to me, doesn't this feel good for you?" she asked as she started rubbing me through the front of my pants. "If it helps we can pretend."

The little bit I had experimented with on my own had never, ever been anything close to this. I bit my lip and tasted blood on my tongue.

"Ah...uh...pretend what?"

My pants soon found their way around my ankles. She grasped me fully, her hand moving at a steady pace.

"I won't be your clone, but I can be your big sis instead. How about you can call me Naruko-neechan?" Naruko punctuated this by pumping her fist faster and tighter.

"...Neechan?" I gasped, as she licked my wounded bottom lip and softly pressed hers to mine.

After a short while, I cried out as I loosed all the pressure and anxiety that had been building up, as if heaven and hell had been raging inside me, all over the hardwood floor of my living room/kitchen.

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There's a funny thing about pretending.

If you pretend something long enough and hard enough, fact and fiction start to blur so much so you never hope to seperate them again.

I don't know exactly why Naruko offered to pretend that night, but I can only tell you how it felt in the aftermath.

I felt as if, after being starved my entire life, I was parked in front of an all-you-can-eat-buffet and told to go nuts. I gorged myself on Naruko's affections, and returned them with a frightening intensity, losing myself in the warmth of our intertwined limbs.

I really can't explain how it worked out to be like this, but I have a theory or two.

Ever since I found out about the Kyuubi and walked through the halls of my mind to demand rent from it, I've considered the real estate of my mind to be fairly fractured. The Nine-Tailed-Bastard's prison probably takes up a good slice, but, come to think of it, my constant usage of the Kage Bunshin has also likely done some odd things to my mind.

I wouldn't have even noticed it if Kakashi-sensei hadn't mentioned anything during our current training to perfect the Rasengan. It was odd attempting to differentiate all the memories, knowledge, and insights that weren't mine to begin with.

The continued and prolonged usage of the Kage Bunshin technique is supposed to be mildly traumatic, at the very least. It's a kinjutsu capable of fracturing the user's mind, which would be of concern if not for Kyuubi, and for the fact that my mind has been divvied up like a pie sliced for too many servings already.

The odd thing about Naruko is that I never receive her memories like I would from a normal kage bunshin. She knows mine, but that may be a result of her having made some dusty corner of my mind hers, and hers alone.

It never dawned upon me until recently, but Naruko-neechan is anything but a normal Kage Bunshin. I have always kept her a secret from everyone. No one, not Ero-Sennin, not Iruka-sensei, not Konohamaru, not Sakura-chan, and not Tsunade-obachan knows. Even when I use the Harem no Jutsu, I always summon shadow clones of myself first before using my version of henge.

Naruko, I conjured whole and complete. I didn't even think of it at the time, but she was technically never a clone of me from the start.

Just what is she to me?

An addiction?

A crutch?

A sister?

A lover?

It's complicated.

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Love has always been complicated for me.

I can sort of understand, conceptually, that there is supposed to be a significant difference between familial and physical love. It's just weird that with my haphazard upbringing it doesn't feel as if it is as clearly defined for me as it is for other people.

I always joke with Kiba about Hana, his hot older sister, and he always gets this sour-assed expression like he sucked a bag full of lemons every time. It's like clockwork.

Real love is a big heaping mess for me, laced throughout with physical and emotional desire, unless we're talking about camaraderie and brotherhood. That's pretty damn clear for me. I want to save that bastard Sasuke from Orochimaru, not tap out a rhythm with my balls slapping against his ass.

The boundaries between Naruko and I have always been really fucking blurry to say the least. It helps though that our relationship is a secret I keep like none other.

Some other relationships I have are just as mixed up.

I briefly think of the odd dynamic I have with Tsunade-obachan, before I look at my clock and realize that it's time to train.

The rasengan isn't going to perfect itself.

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I wake up and look at the ceiling.

Fuck, I overdid it again I realize, recognizing the ceiling pattern as one belonging to Konoha's General Hospital.

I'm fully clothed, but I'm hooked to a drip bag and some sort of heart monitor.

I feel alright, but a little hungry.

The IV needle slips out easily enough, but when I disconnect from the heart machine it goes haywire, making all sorts of fucking beeping noises. I don't want to accidentally wreck it and pay for it like I did last time, so I try to slip out into the hallway unnoticed.

Shit, busted.

A fuming Tsunade is barreling down the hall, probably considering the benefits of hurting me seriously. Wisely enough, the other patients and medic-nin decide to fuck-off and mind their own business having witnessed the Godaime on the warpath before.

"You idiot! You're supposed to take it easy after suffering chakra exhaustion."

I look away, and don't try to defend myself. The fact that she was really worried is obvious enough.

After a short while, her expression softens and the Hokage pulls me into a bone-crushing hug when she sees no one else is looking.

This is our little secret. I'm her unquestioned favorite person in the entire village.

"I don't know what I'd do if anything happened to you. Be careful. Please."

I feel like scum now, but it's tolerable as I feel loved, so I return the hug and mumble my assent.

These moments are becoming increasingly more rare nowadays, as her position as Hokage takes more and more of her time. She's the closest thing I have to a mother, and I love her.

Pressed up against her, I can't help but feel her eerie resemblance to an older Naruto-neechan in her prime. She's so kind and beautiful. With my arms around her and her arms encircling me, I start to feel a sensation in my lower abdomen.

No. No. No.

I try to think of things to derail this situation from its obvious conclusion.

She's old, man. A granny. Think of granny fanny. No, don't think of her ass---God that didn't help. Think of Ero-Sennin's wrinkly old ass. Yeah.

I feel her full lips against pressed to my cheek in a chaste kiss, and her very womanly figure still presses against me.

It feels nicer to me than you can comprehend.

I briefly imagine the both of us as puzzle pieces, but then frantically try to avoid dwelling on all the interesting ways we could fit together.

I fail spectacularly.

No. No. No.

Contact is made, and there is no fucking way in hell that she won't recognize what's poking her in the abdomen. She has studied human anatomy for longer than I've been alive.

Her calm cycle of breathing suddenly catches in her throat, and we soon split apart as if magnetically repelled.

By the time she opens her mouth to say something, but I am well on my way to my apartment.

The heart-monitoring machine I disconnected from continues to beep incessantly.

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If embarrassment were fatal, there's a good chance I'd be dead now.

The moment I slam my apartment door shut, Naruko-neechan appears.

While I shut my eyes trying to forget the outside world, she holds me and kisses my forehead tenderly. When I calm down enough to open them, she's different now. She's noticeably older and her eyes are warm brown compared to her usual clear blue. The whisker marks are gone, but on her forehead is the distinctive diamond mark of the Sozo Saisei.

Naruko-neechan is helping me the only way she knows how. She's pretending to be Tsunade so that I can pretend I'm not a coward and a pervert.

This isn't the first time we've done something like this. After the chuunin exams, Naruko did a great job as Mitarashi Anko, even scratching me with a kunai for authenticity.

Although not the first time, this ranks among the most desperate of occasions. I kiss her roughly, hopelessly trying to convey the strength of my feelings and the depths of my confusion over them. We're both hungry, as if this were a long time coming.

My fingers probe my Naruko-as-Tsunade almost angrily and let me know that no foreplay is needed. I unzip my pants and tug free from my confinement.

Not bothering to disrobe, I plunge in as deeply as I can, willing and wanting to lose myself in this, in her, in our little fantasy.

With her legs wrapped around me, we never make it to the bed, but continue on the hardwood floor.

This is bruising us, but we can't seem to care.

She ends up on her hands and knees with me behind her, grabbing her hips like the last lifeline from a rescue boat, pushing me and her together.

Maybe I feel so broken, that I just want to push into something and finally be whole.

When I see drops of moisture land on her beautiful back, I mop my brow only to find not sweat, but tears silently running down my face.

She cries out in pleasure, and tenses all around me. I soon follow after her, shouting and spilling out, and feeling tension and warmth leave me.

Once again, I've unloaded all my love and self-hate into her, but she's still here.

"I'm sorry," I choke out, disgusted at myself.

Her hands grasp my face and wipe away my tear tracks.

A small portion of my mind seeds doubts, whispering, "This isn't real. This is all an illusion."

Another part counters, "This is real enough."

As we rest on the wooden floor, she pulls me in a tight embrace.

I feel so fucking lost...

...but I can't seem to summon up the will to want to be found.

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The End

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Comments and criticism are welcome.

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